Companies, universities, governments, and other operators of large-scale network services implement many different types of architectures and methods to prevent and avoid downtime for websites. For example, these entities have used techniques such as content delivery networks (“CDNs”), global server load balancing (“GSLB”), route health injection, and/or expensive network device redundancy. Various embodiments of these technologies are sometimes referred to as “high availability,” “high reliability,” and “load balancing,” any of which may typically involve techniques such as round robin DNS (domain name server) routing, scheduling algorithms, etc. All of these technologies are used to ensure that a website is consistently available, and that the website loads completely in an appropriate amount of time. However, when problems occur because of equipment failure, software failure, and/or due to the operational complexity of such a system, a website provided by a primary web server may become unavailable, load slowly, and/or provide a poor user experience.
One useful technique for providing a backup to a primary website involves mirroring (e.g., “duplicating”) the primary physical hardware resources and software resources. However, this technique is costly and requires onerous work to integrate the backup solution with the primary software resources. Additionally, when using such a backup solution during failure of the primary resources, the backup website may contain stale content and/or the backup website may appear different on a user's web browser. To complicate matters further, when a failure occurs, the switching to the backup system may require manual intervention by an administrator of the system and/or the switching may occur slowly, thereby degrading a user's experience. In such a system, the backup website is unduly complicated out of necessity.
Accordingly, a need exists for systems and methods for an improved backup or secondary website that operates in a predictable and reliable manner. More specifically, a need exists for systems and methods for a backup or secondary website with content mirrored from a primary website that provides the content when the primary website is otherwise unavailable.